


A loathly lady

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 12:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14873373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: When Arthur ruinsanotherinnocent hunting trip, he returns with a question that will change Gwaine's life:What is it that women most desire?





	A loathly lady

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clutzycricket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clutzycricket/gifts).



> For Never, an attempt at wangling Ragnelle into the BBC!Merlin 'verse <3

It was  _ supposed  _ to be a picnic.

Well, officially, they were hunting, but none of them were wearing armour and they only had the swords on their hips and the longbows none of them were any good with on hand. Gwen had shooed them all out of Camelot, insisting that they take Arthur anywhere at all, so long as she didn’t have to hear him bellyaching about the business of ruling any longer.

She’d said it fondly, of course, but she’d still said it. Gwaine counted that a victory.

It was  _ supposed  _ to be a picnic, but of course it went wrong.

“Well,” Percival said. “It seems we’ve lost the King.”

 

* * *

”I’ve never met a man with his skill for getting into trouble,” Leon said, kicking aside another branch and stepping deeper into the undergrowth. “How does he  _ always  _ manage to stumble into danger?”

Gwaine bites down on a laugh as best he can, because it’s so obvious how Arthur always ends up in trouble. He’s an  _ idiot. _ That’s how. 

Merlin, also an idiot, but an idiot Gwaine was painfully fond of, just about managed not to stumble and fall. Mostly because the King appeared right before he hit the ground, and caught Merlin.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Elyan said. “Where did you get to?”

Arthur sighed the way he only did when there was trouble ahead, and Gwaine braced himself for it. It was always terrible, when Arthur sighed like that.

“His name,” the King said, “was Sir Gromer Somer Joure.”

 

* * *

The ride back to Camelot was horrible, if only because of the bickering.

“Well,  _ I  _ can’t go,” Elyan said, “I’m the Queen’s brother, I  _ have  _ to stay to guard her-”

“And I’m First Captain of Camelot,” Leon said, which was much more reasonable than  _ I’m Gwen’s brother _ . “I need to be here to maintain order.”

“That’s very true,” Percival agreed. “I, on the other hand, just don’t want to go.”

The simplicity of that took them all aback, and made Gwaine realise just how pointless this all was. They could bicker back and forth for hours - they had done, more than once - and he wondered how things might have gone had there been  _ more  _ of them. Young Galahad was showing promise, maybe if they battered a bit of sense into him, they could fob the King off with  _ him  _ whenever he needed a companion?

Not that Galahad would be much use now - he could hardly speak to  _ them,  _ never mind to women. And the King had to speak to women, as many women as he could, to answer Sir Gromer Somer Joure’s challenge.

“What if,” he said,  _ “I  _ go with the King? After all - none of the rest of you knows how to talk to a woman, and he’s already at enough of a disadvantage.”

Leon gave Gwaine a  _ look,  _ the kind he usually reserved for Merlin when Merlin was being particularly daft, and Gwaine understood that. He had never been very good at hiding his dislike of Arthur as a person, his distaste for the King’s company, and the idea of traipsing around the country to find an answer for this stupid bloody question was, well, next to intolerable. 

But… Leon may as well have been a monk. Percival was as likely to woo the women they met as he was to ask them the question, which was hilarious usually but which would be just a touch of a hindrance in this quest, and Elyan was so shy around women who weren’t the Queen that he’d only be a nuisance. 

The question itself was… Well. It was absurd.

_ What is it that women most desire? _

Well, safety. A good home. A husband who treated them well. Food in their bellies and clothes on their backs. A chance to revel, and dance, and to see smiles on their children’s faces. 

Safety allowed for all the rest of that, or depended on it. So surely it was safety that women most desired in the world. Gwaine knew that his thoughts on the matter wouldn’t be welcome, but he had known enough poor women and scared women and hurt women to know that safety  _ must _ have been important to them. 

It was important to his mother. Gold, to provide food and shelter. A home within city walls, to prevent slavers and rapers. A job, to provide coin, to maintain their home within the city walls and to put food on the table. 

But it’s not him that has the answer. It’s every woman in the country, so they’d best get going.

Merlin thinks they’re mad for doing it - or at least, he’s putting on a good show of thinking they’re mad, but Gwaine knows just how panicky Merlin looks when he’s worrying about a magical calamity, and he’s exactly that kind of panicky now.

Find the answer to the impossible question, or the King dies. It’s simple, really.

 

* * *

Eleven months in, and the King had been slapped, beaten with brooms, kicked in the arse, kicked in the bollocks, and once, memorably, kicked in the face. 

They were no closer to an answer now than they had been when they left Camelot.

Or, well, they had hundreds of answers. They’d parted ways at Carlisle and joined up again near Lincoln, and they’d been back together for the better part of two months - not once had the King managed an actual conversation with a woman without insulting her, and not once had he gotten a wholly sincere answer.

“I hate to admit it,” he saod, “but I think we must surrender.”

Gwaine hated to admit it too, since  _ he’d  _ spent the past eleven months being helpful and charming and kind, even when he’d have rathered fall on his sword than be polite to another horrible old bat with an attitude as sour as a crabapple. The King had had no luck whatever, and looked wearied and beaten down in a way alien to everything Gwaine knew of him. 

Back to Inglewood Forest they went, rejoined by Merlin and Leon and the rest, with Merlin griping enough along the way to keep them all amused. It was a strange sort of a journey, longer now and shorter then, and quite suddenly, they’d lost the King.

Again.

 

* * *

“An ugly old woman asked for you by name, Sir Gwaine,” the King said grandly, looking at once terrified and arrogant to the point of prigishness. “She wants your hand in marriage, in return for the answer we need.”

Gwaine looked to Merlin. He looked to Leon. To Percival and Elyan and Lancelot.

“You’re asking me to choose between my personal freedom,” he said slowly, not wanting to misspeak, “and the safety of the entire realm? Just so we’re sure, sire.”

The King nodded.

“Where is she?” Gwaine asked. “If she’ll have me, we can wed on the morrow, and you can have your answer.”

Merlin’s face was tight with something grim, but Gwaine couldn’t see how this was even a choice. He’d never been one for grand sacrifices, and he was hardly Arthur’s biggest fan, but he knew how much the cohesion of the realm depended on the King’s continued existence - this  _ wasn’t a choice. _

“Poor thing,” Percival said bracingly, crossing his arms and grinning, a much appreciated effort, even if it was a little thin. “Imagine being stuck with  _ you _ .”

 

* * *

This lady of the King’s announced herself as Dame Ragnelle, sister of Ser Gromer Somer Joure, and she wasn’t nearly as ugly as Arthur had pronounced her.

She was tall, if stooped, and while her face was marked as if by pox, her dark eyes were intelligent, and her shy smile was charming, even if it was missing a few teeth here and there. Her manner was pleasant enough, polite and sincere and a little serious, which Gwaine appreciated more than anyone would ever believe.

“So you are Ser Gwaine,” she said, when they met beneath a magically wrought bower of bright apple blossoms. She had blossoms in her hair, and a posie of them in her work-rough hands. She looked hardy and strong, in a way that reminded Gwaine of the women he’d grown up around, of the brave women who faced down nobles of Uther Pendragon’s ilk with nothing more than a stern will and a sharp tongue. 

“And you Dame Ragnelle,” he returned, offering her his hand - her grip was firm, unafraid in a way that belied the nerves obvious in the way she couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “A pleasure, my lady.”

Her brother, the great Ser Gromer Somer Joure, stood at the King’s side at the end of the bower, ready to join Gwaine in marriage with the lady. Arthur’s face was stony, as if he couldn’t imagine ever entering into something like this - but surely he knew that it took more than a pretty face to build a marriage? He’d not fallen for Gwen based solely on her looks, and Gwaine had more respect for this woman who’d offered up her own freedom for the sake of a kingdom that likely had never done a thing for her, risking her brother’s wrath in the process. 

Gwaine didn’t think he’d ever met a braver woman, and he’d grown up surrounded by brave women.

 

* * *

After the ceremony, Gwaine guided the lady away by the elbow, hiding her behind the cherry blossoms to give her a moment away from his friends and their… Everything.

“I hope you will not be put off by their rowdiness, my lady,” he said, plucking down a handful of cherries and offering them to her from the palm of his hand - sour cherries, rich and heavy on the tongue when she in turn offers one to him, pressing it to his lips with another of those shy smiles. “Camelot is more civilised than they would have you think.”

She tested one of the cherries herself, rolling the flesh on her tongue, staining her lower lip deep red. 

“As am I, my lord,” she said, and then she leaned up to kiss him.

When she pulled away - when he opened his eyes - she was not at all as she had been. Her fine, dark eyes were just the same, deep and clever and watchful, and the echo of her strong-boned face and powerful shoulders, the long legs and the full hips. But there was something else, an overwhelming beauty that seemed to light her like magic.

She was beautiful. The most beautiful woman Gwaine had ever seen. If he brought a wife like this to Camelot, he would have to set a guard on her for her own safety, because there were few men he trusted not to chase such a woman.

“If it please my lord,” she said, her clever eyes watching his reactions, “if it be your choice, I may appear like this always, instead of solely while I am alone in your presence.”

Her face, so beautiful, was layered with fear.

And Gwaine thought -  _ a wife like this, I would be the envy of Camelot. _

And Gwaine thought -  _ a wife like this, and I would have the finest children in the world. _

And Gwaine thought -  _ a wife like this, and she doesn’t need a face fairer than an angel. _

“The choice,” he said, “is yours, my lady - I am well pleased to have the honour of being your husband, no matter which face you prefer.”

And Ragnelle, brave Ragnelle with her clever eyes and her pure heart, smiled. She was neither ugly nor beautiful now, but simply a fine, tall woman, with strong cheekbones and a gap between her front teeth. 

“You, Sir Gwaine,” she said, waving a hand and setting a mantle of trailing green tendrils shining with apple blossoms around his shoulders, setting a slice of sweet red apple to his lips. “You are not the husband my brother warned me of, when he set this challenge to your King. It’s a rare man indeed who would offer his wife a choice when shown a face so fair as that.”

“Nor are you the wife my King threatened me with, when he took your brother’s bargain,” Gwaine returned, unable to keep from smiling. “We can make a go of this, I think.”

Her dark eyes flashed bright apple-blossom white for a moment, and he feared, just for a heartbeat, how to hide her magic from Arthur - but a woman with so strong a heart was surely bright enough to survive Arthur. Even  _ Merlin  _ had managed that, so far.

“Sister!” Ser Gromer Somer Joure called. “The answer, else your husband-”

“ _ Sovereynté _ ,” she called back, her eyes never leaving Gwaine’s. “The right to choose their own destiny - that is what women desire most in this world.”

Well, Gwaine thought -  _ a wife like this, I can let her choose. _


End file.
